Silence, Cursed Silence
by Fyrshi
Summary: Sweet Amoris isn't usually a quiet town- if anything, there's normally not a moment of peace to be found- so it's no wonder that there would be people that yearned for peace in the boisterous town. However, the quiet that one particular girl wished for goes slightly awry when the whole town is plunged into a terrifying sort of silence... [Currently Rated T; Full Warnings Inside]
1. The Morning Nobody Arrived

_**A/N: **I should be studying, or uploading any one of my other ongoing fanfiction stories... but instead, I'm uploading this story, which I've taken the time to rewrite. Well, I could probably ramble on forever about this story, but you can find the general details listed below and the rest of the story in the next few chapters, I guess... so, unless anyone is interested to know about how infrequently (i.e. biweekly) the updates will be, then please read on..._

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the My Candy Love franchise (which is owned by the Beemoov company) or the characters from said franchise. The only thing I own is my OC (whose name will be revealed in the 1st chapter) and my imaginary setting (which will be revealed sometime in the near future).  
WARNING: This story contains elements of psychological horror and gore, which may become graphic (or as graphic as the site will allow) in the near future. DO NOT read this story if you cannot tolerate any of the two elements listed above...  
**_**Note: **This story was initially published under the title of 'Whatchu Gonna Do When They Come For You?'. All rights and reservations have been duly bestowed by the initial author, Fyrvim, and this story has been given permission to be uploaded online once more, albeit after undergoing a complete transformation._

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**~Prologue: The Morning Nobody Arrived~**

* * *

**Day Zero- 7:45am**

* * *

Early mornings were one of those instances in the day when the majority of people would be quite happy to continue slumbering away and dreaming of nonsensical things, and the sleeping girl was just one of those many people. Ignorant of the birds chattering outside and the natural life that was welcoming the start of a new day, she snorted softly and tossed onto the other side of her body as her breathing choked up for an instant, before it evened out once more. Despite the fact that it was a weekday and that, on any normal weekday, there would be a great deal of noise outside, there was nothing that was particularly loud enough to shock her awake from her repose. If anything, the loudest thing that could be heard in her modestly-furnished bedroom was the snoring that bubbled out of her throat and joined the vibrant wildlife outside.

However, the day could not go as idyllic as the girl had hoped and, instead of getting a few extra minutes to snuggle happily into her pillow and invariably cover it with no small amount of slobber, the insistent ringing of her alarm clock jolted the girl out of her sleep. Blearily rubbing her eyes and muttering a grumpy curse under her breath as she found herself tumbling out of her crumpled sheets and onto the cold floor below, she rubbed at her sore behind and finally kicked the offending cause of her aching into a temporary state of silence. With a yawn escaping from her mouth –one of many that she was sure was going to emit from her mouth before the day would be over– the girl combed her messy tresses out of her eyes and haphazardly made her bed, before she stumbled into the adjoining bathroom and attempted to freshen herself up.

By the time the girl had finally dragged her body out of the cool ceramic-tiled room, her hair was in a slightly neater state and her wrinkled pyjamas had been exchanged for one of the few outfits that weren't in any dire need of a good wash. Suppressing yet another yawn as she lurched over to the closed curtains, the girl ripped them open and nearly allowed another curse to slip past her mouth when bright sunlight, along with a raucous cacophony of indignant squawks, assaulted her form. With a dark look and a slurred mutter, she staggered back to her half-packed bag and proceeded to stuff anything of importance into its various pockets, before she slung it over her shoulder and exited her room without a backward glance.

As the door to her compact apartment slammed shut and the girl proceeded to trip her way down the stairs, the alarm began to sound once more with its piercing rings and whiny beeps. Although the birds outside the window were less than impressed with the noise and would invariably knock out a great amount of brain cells in their attempts to get inside and silence the infuriating chirps, the alarm continued to ring uninhibited, until its batteries finally gave out and it died in the middle of its ringing, exactly 12 hours after it had first sounded out its boisterous song.

It would be a very long time before the alarm sounded once more…

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**Day Zero- 8:15am**

* * *

_Wow, it sure is silent today…_

This was the first thought that appeared in the girl's head when she finally managed to make her way outside of the apartment block she lived in, though it wasn't the most accurate of thoughts that were liable to popping into a bleary individual's mind. Sure, there were the usual crickets rubbing their legs merrily in grassy sidewalks that had probably never seen a lawnmower in their lives and there were various birds hopping gaily down the street and threatening to burst their chests from the amount of cheeping leaving their bosoms… but that was all that there was to the noise.

There were no bicycles running down any unfortunate birds that'd momentarily forgotten the existence of their wings and no giggling high-schoolers traipsing down the sidewalk to the local high school. There were no mothers running after their children with overlooked lunch-boxes in their hands, and there were no old men to wave their walking sticks at the non-existent children and choke out their disapproval in wheezing tones. In fact, if she hadn't known any better, she'd bet that there was practically nobody in town anymore.

In a town of 500-strong members, of which each was a somewhat-active participant in society's daily rituals –that is, if the lazy ass of a certain redhead rocker wasn't too busy being embedded in his dishevelled room– there was bound to be some sort of activity in the town, unless it was the middle of the night. Unfortunately, this _wasn't_ the middle of the night but was, instead, the middle of a busy morning that should've been bursting life. For some unknown reason that was certainly not going to make itself any clearer soon, the girl found herself very much alone on the streets as she slowly made her way to Sweet Amoris High.

And she didn't like the relative silence one bit.

* * *

**Day Zero- 8:30am**

* * *

The front doors of the school were open, which came as a relief to the girl; after all, unless it was either some ungodly hour at night or a weekend, the school gates were never seen closed and padlocked. Although the normality of open school gates both comforted and annoyed the girl somewhat, she consented to make her way inside and make a beeline for the lone bench at the back of the school's main building. On a relatively normal school day, there would be a lone redhead sprawled across its wooden length or a notebook lying innocuously under one of its iron armrests, but as fate would have it, the bench was completely and utterly devoid of either people or objects.

However, this didn't bother the girl all too much –after all, her rebellious friend often liked to move places before he could be found by a certain authoritative member of the Student Council, and the notebook had probably been discarded in a different location– so she turned away from the bench and continued to look around. The garden, often manned by the green-haired apprentice from a neighbouring school or hiding the timid girl that was often sketching away, was curiously empty. The basketball courts, frequently visited by the dark-skinned player from yet another neighbouring school or housing one of her less sociable friends, was curiously empty as well. In fact, by the time she had made a full circuit around the main building and climbed all the trees within the school grounds for good measure, the girl was quite sure that nobody was outside.

Either her alarm had well and truly screwed up with its time and she was actually late for classes, or the school was just as devoid of people as the streets seemed to be.

The problem that had seemed to swallow up the town could probably wait until later.  
For now, though, she'd just go inside and see if someone was also unaware of this stupid practical joke.

* * *

**Day Zero- 8:40am**

* * *

A quick perusal of the school building's interior confirmed the exact same situation as the streets outside and the general outdoor grounds of the school- to put things simply, it seemed that she was the only person in the town of Sweet Amoris that hadn't been magically whisked away somewhere. As much as she didn't wish to believe in magic or grand organizations that were focused on the eradication of her new town of residence, there were very few plausible options that she could use to explain away the situation, and the options that she came up with were not exactly pretty ones.

Being a pessimist was one of the many perks of the girl's personality, and this particular part of her flared up with a vengeance when the door to the Student Council Room swung open to reveal absolutely no sign of the vigilant blonde that often manned its interior. While she endeavoured to ignore the nagging voice that prodded at the interior of her mind, she headed towards the sheafs that would often depict the names of students that'd signed in for the day, and was not particularly surprised to find that the list was completely bereft of writing. With a quick look around and a soft sigh, she whipped out her pen and scrawled her name within the lines, before she headed straight out of the room and resolutely marched to the front door.

There was no point staying at school when there was nobody _at_ the damn school to begin with, and despite her obvious love –or lack thereof– for the majority of the students that attended her classes with her, there was no way she was going to hang around in wait of somebody else, especially when there was very little chance that the 'somebody else' was actually going to come. There was no point going to find anyone either, if her hunch was right and there was actually nobody else apart from herself in the abandoned town, so there was absolutely no need for her to run around screaming her head off like a maniac, which was what most hysterical girls would do in her given situation. In fact, if she was so inclined to think in such a manner, there was no point in doing anything except for going home and sleeping again, because there was nothing to do when there was only one person to do anything to begin with.

With the singular thought of going home and declaring to nobody in particular that the world was simply a rotten figment of her imagination that was out to get her, the girl furrowed her brows and prepared to be blinded by the sun once more as her hand extended towards the front doors of the school building… but her hands never got anywhere close to its tinted panes. A fuzzy thought that ran along the lines of '_Oh, I wonder why that school bell's ringing when there's obviously going to be no school?_' flitted through her head and disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared, before nothing else came to mind. The solitary thud of her head as it sharply hit the floor and stayed in its odd position mere centimetres from the door echoed through the hallways as the bell rung twice and gave up on its third try, before silence reigned once more.

Somewhere on the outskirts of town, on some unspecified day, a billboard ticked thoughtfully before its electronic display merrily announced to the car streaking away from it: "We hope you've enjoyed your stay here with our friendly residents in Sweet Amoris, dear visitor! Please do come visit us some other time!"

* * *

**Day Zero- 9:00am**

* * *

The town hall had various meters –one told the temperature, while another displayed the goals that the local football team had made in the season– but one particular meter was quietly whirring away. Nobody had any idea how this meter managed to display what it did, and why is was eerily accurate at its readings, but there was nobody to question its accuracy, even as the numbers on its display simply stopped ticking and gave up on its movements. If somebody had been checking the meters, as they normally would be on a typical day, it would've most probably be termed as a broken instrument and would join the countless other obsolete meters in the dustbin outside.

After all, it was impossible to have a grand total of 0 residents in the town's limits…

* * *

**_Next time, on 'Silence, Cursed Silence'..._**

_It was an undeniable fact of life that mornings were always worse when one realized that waking up meant a desertion of pleasant dreams, so it was understandable when the girl tossed around for a while and finally managed to wake up after she'd hit her head on the wall. Unfortunately for her, though, waking up to a blinding headache that only increased with the addition of a mild concussion was nothing short of torturous as it was, and her reluctance to awaken to begin with merely added to her disgruntlement. However, when her muddled brain finally expelled the fuzziness from its confines and began to think coherently once more, her displeasure gave way to uneasy annoyance, as well as just a little bit of confused fear._

_After all, mornings did not generally reek of staleness and varying degrees of decay._

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_Please read and review if possible~_


	2. Down The Rabbit Hole

_**Response To Guest Review: **It would be interesting to have zombies, I suppose, but I've seen quite a number of zombie apocalypses and I guess I just wanted to do something different (so to answer your question, there won't be zombies featuring majorly in this particular story). However, there will be a small band of characters that will be accompanying my Candy as she goes about the course of the story, so hopefully her adventures will still be interesting enough to read. Thank you for reviewing, by the way, and I'm sorry for having to answer your review here ^^;_

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**~Chapter One: Down The Rabbit Hole~**

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The only times when the girl would get a headache were generally on the days when she woke up after a night of amorous felines had disturbed her slumber, or when her rock-obsessed friend had subjected her to too many heavy-metal soundtracks minutes before she tumbled gratefully into her bed… but neither had happened to her beforehand. Despite the fact that, from what she could recall, her previous day and current night had seemed to progress without too much interruption, there was a dull throbbing that refused to leave her to enjoy her dreams —which were somewhere along the lines of resting in bed with a good thriller novel— and, as much as she wanted to continue resting, school was probably not going to wait for her to arrive late again.

Besides, that little nightmare she had before seemed to be telling her to 'stop ignoring the alarm clock and get to school before the day disappears again', and nightmares were generally something that should be heeded. Even if her current inclinations were leaning towards the dream she had after it…

* * *

**Day One- 00:00**

* * *

It was an undeniable fact of life that mornings were always worse when one realized that waking up meant a desertion of pleasant dreams, so it was understandable when the girl tossed around for a while and finally managed to wake up after she'd hit her head on the wall. Unfortunately for her, though, waking up to a blinding headache that only increased with the addition of a mild concussion was nothing short of torturous as it was, and her reluctance to awaken to begin with merely added to her disgruntlement. However, when her muddled brain finally expelled the fuzziness from its confines and began to think coherently once more, her displeasure gave way to uneasy annoyance, as well as just a little bit of confused fear.

After all, mornings did not generally reek of staleness and varying degrees of decay.

As her nose went into lockdown and her eyes watered at the rank odours assaulting her senses, the girl attempted to lift up a hand to wipe away at the moisture seeping down her face, but found that the limb was in no position to aid her anytime soon, due to its state of temporary paralysis. While she attempted to bring it back to life with a few half-hearted thumps against the wall ─which, much to her disgusted displeasure, were covered in the fluffy vegetation that irritated her nose─ further activity in her brain brought the girl to a rather disturbing realization that she probably would've noticed earlier, had it not been for the tearing of her eyes. For some inexplicable reason, it seemed that she was far from being in her overstuffed bed and messy room on a typical morning. If anything, she'd bet that this was probably a place that she hadn't seen or encountered before.

Further observations of her basic situation came after she'd beaten her hand back to life against the scant bits of wall that weren't coated in an unidentified slime or a thick mantle of moss, but there was nothing much that could be seen in the dim light of her surroundings. Thanks to the watery state of her eyes upon her emergence from sleep, she hadn't particularly noticed the fact that she was standing up, or that she was hemmed in on all sides by walls in varying states of disintegration, but now that her mind was just a little clearer, all these facts became a little too apparent to her. As questions and exclamations fought to burst out of her throat, the girl continued to take in the hazy lamp situated just beside her head and the sparse spaces between herself and the cracked stone around her, as if she wasn't in a questionable situation in an unknown place.

But then again, who would readily believe that they were trapped in a stone coffin with no viable escape?

* * *

**Day One- 00:10**

* * *

Claustrophobia was not a condition that the girl generally suffered from, but after she got out of this horrible space she'd been forced into ─if, a snide voice murmured in her head, she ever got _out_ to begin with─ she'd be quite glad to avoid all closed-in spaces for the next few days. However, as much as she wanted to forget about her current lack of wellbeing and drown in her mental impressions of woe, there was no much use in her lamenting her fate when, clearly, there would probably be nobody else to lament said fate if she never escaped to tell the tale. While the air attempted to suffocate her in its grasp and the dim light flickered ominously beside her head, she suppressed her fright and unease as shaky hands stretched out to the dripping wall before her.

Apart from the furry sliminess that sent shivers crawling down her spine and the grainy cracks that threatened to slice her fingers open, there was nothing much else that yielded to her reluctantly inquisitive fingers. Sure, there were the odd bits of dead moss that crumbled away at her touch and a few decomposed bodies of half-eaten insects that would try their best to stick onto a number of her fingers, no matter how much she attempted to shake off the icky things, but there seemed to be nothing else that the wall had to offer. A quick perusal of the walls beside her with her wandering hands seemed to yield the same result as well, and the more she felt around the proximities that her arms were willing to extend her hands to, the more she began to contemplate the idea of curling up and giving it all up as a bad dream of some sort, which she might be lucky enough to wake from soon.

Of course, with the insurmountable amount of bad luck that she seemed to have, it turned out that she couldn't seem to return to sleep either. Every time she closed her eyes, an unpleasant chill crept its way down her spine and her eyes would fling open immediately, only to find that there was nothing much on her back besides the damp stone wall and her slightly damp shirt. Her sustained attempts to squint at the walls bounding her in an attempt to see something her hands couldn't reach did nothing to help her find an exit, and bending down was not an option when her knees refused to budge past the narrow confines they were stuck in.

So perhaps it came as a surprise to the girl that, after an age of squinting and feeling, she ended up chancing upon something other than dead insect, damp wall or furry moss.

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**Day One- 00:25**

* * *

Were it not for the fact that the potential pathogens on her hand would probably make her rather sick, the girl probably would've stuck her bleeding finger into her mouth and hoped to somehow suck the blood and pain away from the injured appendage. It had surprised her greatly when she had chanced upon the enveloped tucked neatly into the ceiling –though, in her defence, the ceiling wasn't exactly the best place to look when her hair was in danger of catching fire from the oily lamp beside her– but she had wasted no time at all in its retrieval. Although manoeuvring around the poor excuse of the light beside her and the half-dead insects that insisted on clinging stubbornly to her body nearly did the girl's head in, she eventually managed to get her hands onto the bit of paper and yank it out of its gap without bringing the precarious stone thing crashing around her head.

Though, now that she thought about things in a more pessimistic light, the prospect of burying herself under a huge pile of rubble was starting to sound more and more attractive as time passed.

Potential suicidal attempts aside, though, the envelope was a rather strange artefact that she hadn't expected to see in such an environment. The fact that it wasn't decaying or decayed was startling enough, but the cursive writing on it that indicated it was addressed to a certain Scarlett Fyorenxal was positively frightening… especially since that also happened to be her name, which had probably just been spelt right for the first time in years. When the sheer novelty of staring at gleaming ink underneath a flickering light had faded somewhat, the girl found herself lifting trembling fingers to slice at the glued flap fixed atop the envelope and unconsciously held her breath as her uninjured hand fumbled inside for the letter.

Strangely enough, the letter looked as sleek as the envelope itself had, with its cursive text and crisp feel to the paper, and the girl found her fingers trembling underneath the dim light of the oil lamp as she withdrew the letter and unfolded it. As she struggled to make sense of the words that flowed elegantly across the page, she began to take in a few snippets of phrases through the sudden nausea and tiredness that sought to swamp over her, before the words finally rearranged themselves as they saw fit, and she began to peruse the contents of the letters before her.

* * *

**Day One- 00:30**

* * *

_Dearest Scarlett,_

She had scoffed a little at the overly sweet greeting, though she kept most of her thoughts to herself. After all, as much as she liked to hear her voice echoing back to her from the decrepit walls, she much preferred the spluttering sounds that the lamp beside her gave on rare occasions.

_It is my pleasure to inform you that you, along with your fellow residents of Sweet Amoris, have been selected as the subjects of a social experiment for… classified purposes._

Social experiment…?

Classified… _purposes_…?!

Her eyes had widened slightly at the words, but had continued to read on regardless.

_Among the 500 residents that reside in the town of Sweet Amoris, you have been picked to be the main subject of our social experiment, and certain pieces of information will be disclosed to you as certain checkpoints are reached, due to your privilege as our main subject. As the primary test subject of our research, though, you will be closely monitored throughout the duration of this activity._

At this, she had frantically glanced around the crumbling stone walls for any signs of hidden cameras —she was almost tempted to lift up individual pieces of moss to check if there was a glimmer behind them— but restrained herself before her worry irrevocably shifted into full-blown panic.

_But don't bother looking around, if you are doing so; our monitoring systems are too sophisticated for your blunted senses to detect… especially since you're probably half-awake and panicking at this stage. Oh, and please don't tear this letter apart until you reach the end of our words to you._

She clicked her tongue and hissed in irritation at the condescending tone oozing through the letter, and had to refrain from the satisfying notion of ripping the paper to shreds. After all, no matter how tempting it was to destroy everything within reach, her angered frenzy would probably do nothing to make her situation any better than it was now.

_Upon awaking, you would have noticed that you were in a stone coffin of some sort. There is an escape from it which we will willingly provide for you as soon as you finish reading this letter, but that is not particularly important at this point in time. What is important, though, is whether you give your consent for your participation in this experiment of ours._

If she had been an imbecile or a mentally deprived person then she'd gladly participate in something as twisted as whatever this was. However, just as she was about to take the letter up on its offer and rip it to shreds, her eyes drifted to the next lines of the letter, and effectively stopped her from her course of action.

_Please note that a refusal to participate in our social experiment will mean a forfeit of your life, though an acceptance of your participation will result in a chance to reclaim your life from our hands, as well as reclaim everyone else's lives as well. Although we will be completely accepting of your wish to forfeit your life should you wish to refuse our invitation, we would highly advise you to accept by simply uttering an affirmative into the space around you._

Now, although the prospect of participating in whatever twisted game the composer of this letter had in mind was highly unsavoury, the loss of her life was an even less appealing notion. There were things that she still had to do and places that she still wanted to visit, and there were too many words that she hadn't uttered to the various people in her life for her to depart peacefully from the world. Even if living meant acquiescing to the composer's twisted demands and bowing to their whims, regardless of whatever they were, the prospect of freedom the person had uttered in the letter was more than enough to give her hope.

So, with the goal of escaping this death-trap and paying back the imbecile that'd locked her up in this makeshift prison clear in her mind, the girl gritted her teeth and snapped out a "Yes" into the silent air around her, before she hazarded a glance down at the letter again.

_Thank you for your acceptance, Scarlett!_

Wait, since when had that line appeared at the bottom of that letter?

_Please hold on tightly to the letter, and don't look down if you value your stomach~!_

What did it mean by that…?! Don't look down? Why couldn't she-

Those were the last thoughts that raced through the girl's mind before the floor disappeared underneath her. In no time at all, she found herself rocketing through the air at breakneck speeds, while the dim light in the stone coffin grew dimmer and dimmer above her head. Soon enough, though, even if she were so inclined to look beyond the blurry walls hurtling past her…

…She probably wouldn't have been able to spot that little crumbling alcove above her anymore.

* * *

_**Next time, on 'Silence, Cursed Silence'...**_

_If this 'social experiment' was to try and force her into acquiring certain phobias, then Scarlett was quite happy to say that this –whatever 'this' actually was– would definitely be a success. Not only had she managed to gain a fear of closed-in spaces from her time spent in that awful stone coffin, she was probably going to get a fear of heights or, at the very least, falling, by the time she ever managed to reach the end of this poorly-constructed chute. As the wind whistled piercingly around her ears and she struggled to keep her hat on her head without scraping her elbows on the uneven rock walls around her, she wondered why people were even bothered to construct something like this was the purposes of letting hapless people, like herself, fall through the air._

_Surely, there were better things for people to do than spend all that time, money and effort on creating an infinitely long tube of crumbling stone._

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_Please read and review if possible~_


	3. A Study Of Scarlett

**~Chapter Two: A Study Of Scarlett~**

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Scarlett Fyorenxal didn't really have anything against her name, even if she happened to be caught sneering at it during random intervals of her life. Sure, it was generally unpronounceable to most of her peers and even she herself was a little puzzled at how exactly her last name should be spelt on documents, but for the most part, she liked how people tended to remember it better… even if it happened to be the wrong pronunciation or spelling that stuck in their minds. She had never really cared for how her first name alluded to –or, rather, shaped– her abnormal fixation with anything of a reddish hue, or how her last name was a jumble of syllables in which practically nobody could make sense of anything, but there was something that nagged at her.

Even as she whizzed at an incredible rate past the stone chute around her body and wondered exactly how large and spectacular the mess would be once she finally made contact with the ground below, a faint thought concerning her name insinuated itself into her mind. Her fairy godmother had been a strange quack that she'd barely tolerated as a child and completely rejected as a teenager, but there were times when she would spout a small bit of wisdom in between her nonsensical prattling and strange hobbies. In fact, now that Scarlett had the strange presence of mind to dwell on her life in light of the fact that it was going to end soon, she recalled the odd brevity in the woman's tone when she had stopped talking about the pricing of fairy slippers and muttered something about her name, before she continued along that tangent as if nothing had been amiss.

There was probably some significance behind the 'curse of crimson' her godmother had muttered about between that entire fairy clothing waffle of hers, but she couldn't seem to figure it out…

* * *

**Day One- 00:40**

* * *

If this 'social experiment' was to try and force her into acquiring certain phobias, then Scarlett was quite happy to say that this –whatever 'this' actually was– would definitely be a success. Not only had she managed to gain a fear of closed-in spaces from her time spent in that awful stone coffin, she was probably going to get a fear of heights or, at the very least, falling, by the time she ever managed to reach the end of this poorly-constructed chute. As the wind whistled piercingly around her ears and she struggled to keep her hat on her head without scraping her elbows on the uneven rock walls around her, she wondered why people were even bothered to construct something like this was the purposes of letting hapless people, like herself, fall through the air.

Surely, there were better things for people to do than spend all that time, money and effort on creating an infinitely long tube of crumbling stone.

Despite having absolutely no indicator of time on her person, whether it be in the form of a watch or a functional mobile phone, the dark-haired girl was very sure of the fact that people did not normally fall for this long a time. Whoever had constructed this straight shaft had certainly been either bored or simply delusional, because the time spent building this long passageway of stone must've taken far too many hours of a few people's lives for this to be anywhere close to a worthwhile venture, especially if it was only built for her use. Although her thoughts were abruptly cut short when a stray outcrop of rock sliced a jagged scar through her elbow and her occupation with her stinging injury terminated the majority of her musing for the time being, the uneasy feelings that accompanied her speculations did not entirely disappear.

Not even when her stomach heaved and she threw up onto the carpeted ground that had suddenly rushed up to meet her descending form.

* * *

**Day One- 00:42**

* * *

Were it not for the fact that Scarlett was suffering from a rather horrible case of nausea, she would have probably taken the time to admire the soft feel of the plush red carpet underneath her. As it was, though, all she could think about was how much the pasty white-yellow of her bile clashed with the red underneath her as she clutched her stomach and heaved into the hollow that just happened to be in the mound of soft fabric surrounding her. By the time the burning acid had receded from her throat and her vision was done spinning the room around her, the dark-haired girl was finally able to lift her eyes from the stained carpet before her.

The excess of red in the room –from crimson carpets covering the floor to the maroon curtains draped across the entirety of the walls– would've normally sent the red-obsessed female into a frenzy, but all she could do now was blanch at the richness of the colours around her form. Her ability to adjust from the darkness into the light was highly limited at best and, thanks to her current physical condition, it took far longer than usual for her eyes to become accustomed to the light. By the time she could finally stop squeezing her eyes without the threat of a headache approaching when she opened them back up again, her mind had settled down somewhat and she was feeling marginally better than she had before. Of course, despite the fact that her brain had accepted the colour overload from the room's furnishings, it would be a long while before she could come to appreciate the stark redness of her surroundings.

After all, as much as she liked to sit around next to a puddle of her vomit, there were better things to do than sit and smell the acrid tang of her stomach juices.

As she clambered down from the heaped carpet and finally left the nauseating stench of her bile behind her, Scarlett was confused to find that the space above her head was an unbroken expanse of off-white ceiling. No matter how she tried to look around for the hole that she fell from, all she could see was the uniform cream of the smooth stones above. Although she had to look down every now and again to check her footing and make sure that she didn't fall and hit her head, the majority of her attention was fixated on the space above her, as if she could somehow bore a hole into the stones and reveal the coffin-like place she had been trapped in mere minutes ago.

So it came as a surprise to her when, instead of the dull thump of her boot on the carpet, she found herself making a rather loud clunking noise as it landed on the hard surface of asphalt.

* * *

**Day One- 00: 55**

* * *

She had been staring at the ceiling the whole time and thus had been quite sure that there had been no walls that had signalled her passage into another room, but Scarlett's surroundings were nothing like the room she had initially landed into. It was true that there were still maroon drapes covering the entirety of the wall and that the ceiling was just as off-white as it had been before, but the floor was not the same painful shade of crimson that the carpets laid down had been. If anything, the asphalt beneath her boots was a dull grey-black colour, which was only broken up by the slight accumulation of moss in various cracks that ran along its grainy surface.

However, what came as a surprise to her was not the sudden change in the surface underneath her feet, or even the complete lack of carpet as far as her eye could see –which was very far, considering that her eyesight had not deteriorated during the short span of her life– but the gaping hole in the middle of the floor.

Although it was probably not a good idea to get so close to the yawning abyss before her, the dark-haired girl couldn't help the slight curiosity that nagged at the edge of her mind and, before she knew it, she was standing on the precipice of the circular chasm in the ground. Her first look into the black hole was enough to confirm what she had originally suspected as soon as her eyes had laid on the curious anomaly on the floor; no matter how far she attempted to peer into the space, there seemed to be no end to its depth. The pebble she had accidentally dislodged as she attempted to get away from the edge plummeted into the cavernous void stretched out before her, and no matter how long she squatted down next to it and listened for an echoing thud that would indicate the pebble's unfortunate meeting with the ground beneath, no sounds deigned to escape from its maw.

As her eyes averted themselves from the hole before her and she stood up to get away from it, a flash of white caught her attention and, instead of resolutely turning her back on the hole and finding something better to examine in the hopes of escaping, she found herself walking parallel to its edge, and towards the innocent envelope lying on the ground. When she finally reached the rectangular object and sliced open its flap to reveal the message inside, she wasn't all too surprised to find the same cursive font that had met her bare minutes ago to stare her in the face again.

The thought that she was getting used to all this confusion was just a little frightening… but she couldn't exactly deny that she wasn't settling into the twisted rhythm that she'd been thrust into.

* * *

**Day One- 01:00**

* * *

_Dearest Scarlett,_

_Before we allow you into our main facility and commence the start of this experiment, we have decided that, for the purposes of our experiment, it would be beneficial to give you a… gift of sorts. For those purposes, we have given you a choice which will be crucial to the course of your time with us. If you would be so kind as to look to your left after this sentence, then we would be quite happy to oblige your curiosity for what we've said so far~_

The saccharine greeting had been just as the letter before had started off, and the pompous flourish evident in the cursive text was still the same as well, but the playful light in the initial message had morphed into something bordering on cruel amusement, and Scarlett couldn't really say that she liked this change any better. However, since the remainder of the letter remained blank, and since there wasn't much else to do other than obey the words written down for her, the girl shook her head slightly and grumbled softly to herself, before she turned her head to the side indicated.

She supposed that she should've been anything but surprised at the change of scenery before her, but it was slightly disorientating to see that, instead of a yawning abyss greeting her eyes, there was a thin catwalk that now stretched to the centre of the pitch-black monstrosity. As her eyes roved over the three backpacks dangling above the end of the catwalk and took in the miniscule symbols etched into their front pockets, her eyes strayed back to the letter before her, which now had a bit more substance to it than it did before.

_There are three backpacks that you see suspended above the centre of the abyss beside you, each with a symbol stitched onto their front pocket. You may be interested to know that the backpack with the brown teardrop sewn onto it contains a quantity of food and water that will be enough to sustain you for around three days. The backpack with the white star embroidered on it, which is situated to the left of the first backpack, contains an incomplete navigation system and a few other useful tools for the specific purposes of mapping out our facility, while the backpack with the red circles stitched onto it (which is on the other side of the aforementioned backpack) contains a range of weaponry, such as a fully loaded Beretta Mx4 Storm with 5 additional clippings and 50 balanced throwing-knives. Please do consider your choices wisely, as you can only get one backpack._

She scoffed at the warning and strode forward towards the catwalk to her side, but as her slim black boot made contact with its polished metal surface, the structure gave an alarming shake and, as she watched on in abject disbelief, the ropes suspending the three backpacks snapped and allowed their weights to careen off the edge. As she cursed and raced onto the steadily retracting footbridge, her eyes jolted down to the last message inscribed onto the letter –which she had neglected to read beforehand– and cursed once more as she dived forward to the nearest backpack.

_Please do note that you only have around 10 seconds to grab the backpack you desire when you step out onto the catwalk. We are confident that you will be able to get whichever rucksack you wish to acquire… but there is always the chance that you manage to grab none of the three severed bags._

_We wish you luck deciding, dearest Scarlett, and we hope that you are happy with the choice that you made~_

Although the mocking letter flapped wildly in her wake and managed to dislodge itself from her clenched hand, her other outstretched fingers managed to snag onto her and, with a yelp of mixed surprise and triumph, she hoisted its surface towards her chest. Unfortunately, though she was much more eager to simply see what was inside and get out what she had selected…

…The discomforting lack of a surface beneath her was a far greater worry at the present moment.

* * *

_**Next Time, On 'Silence, Cursed Silence'...**_

_Nausea was a difficult sensation to deal with at the best of times, so for her to have to deal with it again, after she'd almost vomited her guts out beforehand, was definitely not an experience she ever wanted to deal with anytime soon. However, after the overwhelming urge to evict her stomach contents from their rightful place had passed over and her head had stopped trying to spin the room around herself, she was finally able to appraise the bag in her hand. It was lighter than she'd thought it would be, especially since it had fallen through the air at an extremely rapid rate before, and though the abrasive hessian fabric was rather thick, it still felt manageable in her arms. After she'd spent some time simply weighing the bag and running her listless gaze over its coarse appearance, she finally steeled herself to turn it over and see whether she had managed to grab the items that she had wanted when she'd first sprinted onto that catwalk._

_The sight that met her eyes, though, was enough to make her stomach drop still further inside of her._

* * *

_Please read and review if possible~_


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